Drink Your Way to Smartness: CocktailSmarts

November 20, 2006

So, many cocktails and vermouth-soaked olives later, my project? She is done. Introducing the newest SmartsCo product, which just happens to be written by moi, I give you CocktailSmarts! (Keep reading for a special offer just for you! Did that sound sale-sy enough?)

Those of you who suffered through The Apprentice: Martha Stewart know how much I love and depend upon my cocktails, so if you love them too, take a whack at CocktailSmarts. It's a booklet! It's a game! It's some brightly-colored coasters! With recipes! I hesitate to call this a "drinking game" as in Quarters, A**hole, or Whales, Tails, Prince of Wales, but you know, it's a game and you might be drinking while you play it. Reading about all those tempting cocktails and ingredients is thirsty work.

The thing I love most about this product had very little to do with me. The design. The retro black tin with Art Deco flourishes is so sleek and elegant. It looks incredibly stylish sitting benignly on your coffee table, begging you to open it up and shake up some drinks. It's also the first time SmartsCo has produced a product that wasn't contained a box box. Not only do you get the trivia cards with all sorts of fun questions (ingredients, history, lingo, etc.) and coasters with classic and contemporary cocktail recipes, but you also get the little booklet I wrote with information on how to set up your home bar, more cocktail recipes, and other tips and tricks.

Cocktails are making a big comeback. Using the freshest ingredients, bars all over the country are reaching into the past and whipping up Ginger Rogers, Greyhounds, and that deadliest of Bond martinis, the Vesper. Other bartenders are using new and freaky ingredients and even macerating or infusing their own flavors liquors. If you've never had a Balsamic Bloody Mary at Zuni Cafe made with their house-infused pepper vodka, you've never actually woken up in the morning. CocktailSmarts is a great gift for that hard-to-buy person on your list -- pair it with a bottle of booze and then you'll look really classy!

Here's the party line from my publishers:

The Cosmo. The Manhattan. The Gimlet. These classic cocktails have made a comeback, and they're now joined by dozens of new elixirs. But what exactly goes into those intriguing drinks? And when you've discovered your favorites, how do you order them exactly the way you want them using bartender lingo? Clue in with CocktailSmarts to learn volumes about different alcohols, history, lingo, and other intoxicating facts so you can feel as much like a pro in front of the bar as the guy or gal behind the bar.

If you order it from SmartsCo and enter "Stephanie" as coupon code when you check out, you get 15% off the entire order. So, even if you want to get WinePassport or WineParty or any of the other fun products at SmartsCo, you will get that same discount.

I'm so psyched to see my name on the "spine." The launch party is at the end of the month and the reviews have already started to roll in. So far, they're all good. Yay!